Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Monday and Tuesday Night Gaming

I concluded refereeing my Monday night Swords & Wizardry campaign which had a great finish. So now I am playing in Rusty Battle Axe's campaign using Castles & Crusades. I created Anbar a Human Illusionist. He is a basically a good guy but doesn't take much seriously. The first session went pretty good but we have some work to do to come together as a party. Dwayne's Father Dani (pronounced deny) was much more devout than I expected. Tim's bard's seem more compatible with Anbar's outlook but there is stuff swimming under the surface of that character too. It will come together.

Rusty did a great job as a referee especially with his NPCs. Plus I was wondering if my line-up of illusionist spells would be of any use but proved useful in getting the fox that was preying on the local's chickens.

The things I need be careful of is making sure that Anbar and Father Dani doesn't turn into what happen in another campaign with my character, Sir Hawk, and a character named Sir Jeffery played by another friend named Dave. Pretty much the values of Sir Hawk and of Sir Jeffery conflicted on every level. I was a Knight who served the people, land and king. Sir Jeffery was a Knight Templar first and foremost and damn anybody who got in his way.

I was aware of what Dwayne was planning to do, so decided to make Anbar basically a good guy who agrees with what Dani so devoutly preaches. He just likes having a good time too and not fussy in the way it gets done. Sometimes positively irreverent due he once a street urchin. We will see how it goes, I think it will work out.

Since I am not refereeing Mondays any more I decided to referee the game at the Gold Star Anime more often. Due to scheduling conflicts for the player I will still do the once a month games but will now do short evening sessions on Tuesday every two weeks. The first one was this Tuesday and saw the continuation of the exploration of Tegal Manor.

It started a bit chaotic due to the number of new players, including my wife Kelly-Anne! We been going up to Gold Star for a couple weeks now for board games and now she decided to sit on my roleplaying session. She rolled up a Human Burglar named Alia Juliet Day. A roll on Jeff Rient's XP Charts gave her enough XP to be fourth level. The other three new players rolled a Half-Viridian/Elf Artificer (a type of magic-user), a Orc Soldier, an a Elven Cleric of Silvanus. Returning characters included a Dwarven Paladin, another Elven Cleric of Silvanus, and a Halfling Fighter.

It was a bit of a zany mix but then again Tegal Manor is a crazy place. This session saw the returning players come down the stairs from clearing out the northeast wing and meeting the new characters. After a round of introductions they explored the immediate vicinity and found no way out except the way back to areas already explored. The was an entrance to the rat tunnels so they explored that. Came across a were-rat guarding his treasure and quickly dealt with that.

Further explorations of the tunnel found an exit into a bedroom that appeared to be home to a big game hunter. A strange lizard skeleton threatened them with doom unless it was fed with rot worms. Calling on the power of Silvanus, Janus one of the elven clerics, turn it into dust. Among other things in the room was a strange glowing circle. The Orc Solider took one look stepped into it and disappeared. Half the party went "What the hell." and stepped in as well. The other half also went "What the hell" and decided to search the room and see what beyond the one door.

The Orc Solider and the others found themselves in some type of strange zoo in one of the towers. Teleported one by one, outside of the protections of the viewing area in the center of the room, the creatures attacked the individual party members . They were two giant lizards, two giant toads, a lightning beast (a small blue 3H Lizard, with a horn that can shoot lightning 3d6), a giant dire wolf, a giant rat, and two panthers.

It was pretty dicey for a while. Both the Orc Solider and Kelly Anne's burglar were half-swallowed by the Giant Toads. But when Janus teleported in she turned the tide with a well placed sleep spell. Effected nearly 12 HD of creatures. With the remaining half of party coming in the rest of the creatures were dispatched. But not before Riordan's, the dwarven paladin, little Kobold henchman died after being fried by one of the lightning beast's blasts.

The kobold's last words were (in a Harry Potter's Dobby voice)

Master, I told you bad things happen when you step on those circles.

The session ended soon after and we will pick up again on Saturday with further exploration of the tower.

Bat in the Attic Games

How to make a Sandbox

The Old School Renaissance

To me the Old School Renaissance is not about playing a particular set of rules in a particular way, the dungeon crawl. It is about going back to the roots of our hobby and seeing what we could do differently. What avenues were not explored because of the commercial and personal interests of the game designers of the time.

What are RPGs?

A game where the players play individual characters interacting with a setting with their actions adjudicated by a human referee.

Rules are an aide to help the referee adjudicate actions and to help the players interact with the setting.

Dice are used to inject uncertainty which make a tabletop RPG campaign more interesting than "Let's Pretend".

The only thing a player needs to do to roleplay a character is to act if he or she was really there in the setting in that situation.